Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Library and use Optimise Mac Storage, or move your photo library to an external drive.
2020-4-6 How to back up your iCloud Photo Library. If you have iCloud Photo Library and want to back up all your photos to a storage device attached to your Mac you can follow the guide above, but you will. Oct 25, 2019 On your new Mac: Open Migration Assistant, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Click Continue. When asked how you want to transfer your information, select the option to transfer from a Mac, Time Machine backup, or startup disk. 2012-10-24 What’s the best way to transfer my iPhoto library between an old Macbook and a new Mac? Michael Collins. Books, keywords, slideshows and everything else in your new Mac. But if you already have an iPhoto Library in your new Mac and want to merge it with your old library, the only way to do it is with the paid version of iPhoto Library. Aug 16, 2018 If you have updated your Mac to OS X 10.10.3, you’d like to migrate all your photos from iPhoto Library to Photo Library. Here is the quickest way you can do so. Let’s take a look! Note: Before going further, make sure to delete duplicate files and update any Metadata if you want in your iPhoto Library. Once you have pruned your iPhoto. 2020-4-1 The Mac Photos app allows for the creation of entirely new photo libraries, which means it’s easy to make a separate photo library if you want to keep some pictures outside of.
Before you start, make sure that you back up your library.
Prepare your drive
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure that the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2
- After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Transfer Photo Booth Library To New Mac
Delete original library to save space
After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disc space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, you can open a different one like this:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos uses this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.
1. You can't move your library to a disc that's used for Time Machine backups.
Import Photo Library To New Mac
2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been deleted, this checkbox will either not be present or won't be selectable after unlocking. Delete and reformat the drive for this option to be available.